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« 2026. № 5 (191)

The Ethnology Notebooks. 2026. № 5 (191), 1311—1324

UDK 94-055.2(477.83/.86)”1914/1918″

DOI https://doi.org/10.15407/     

  • Received: 10.07.2026
  • Accepted: 05.10.2026
  • Published: ??.??.2026

A WOMAN DURING THE GREAT WAR OF 1914—1918: A CHOICE OF LIFE OPPORTUNITIES (THE CASE OF UKRAINIAN WOMEN OF GALICIA)

BAIDAK Mariana

  • ORCID ID: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5798-750X
  • PhD (History), Senior Research Fellow,
  • Institute of Ethnology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine,
  • Department of Social Anthropology,
  • 15, Svobody Avenue, 79000, Lviv, Ukraine,
  • Contacts: e-mail: marjanabaidak@gmail.com

Abstract. World War I fundamentally transformed the everyday and public life of women, confronting them with the need to make independent decisions in situations for which no prior experience existed. Although the social activism, professional engagement and feminist discourses of Galician Ukrainian women have repeatedly been the subject of scholarly research, the diverse female experience has not yet been specifically examined through the lens of life choices — conscious or unconscious — that defined the boundaries of women’s opportunities and limitations during the war. This substantiates the relevance of the proposed study.

Aim. To outline various aspects of women’s decisions during World War I, using the example of Ukrainian women of Galicia, in both the private (family, everyday, religious) and public (civic, professional, military, political) spheres of life.

Research methodology. The study is based on the principles of historicism, systematicity, and multi-factor analysis. A historical-anthropological approach was applied, together with the analysis of ego-documents (diaries, memoirs, private correspondence), the comparative-historical method, and the problem-chronological method.

 The source base comprises personal documents held in the Central State Historical Archive of Ukraine in Lviv and the Manuscript Department of the Vasyl Stefanyk National Scientific Library of Ukraine, memoirs of contemporaries, and periodicals of the time (Dilo, Ukrainske Slovo, Nasha Meta, Svoboda).

Results. It was established that women’s readiness to make independent decisions was selective and depended on personal experience, education, material circumstances, family environment, and the situation at the front. The war simultaneously expanded and restricted women’s autonomy: it opened space for emancipation and professional, civic, and even military self-realization, yet encountered resistance from the conservative part of society and internal ideological constraints among women themselves. The majority of Ukrainian women continued to hold traditional roles of housewife and mother, while a minority  — students, civic activists, and women of creative professions — consciously chose new life scenarios.

Keywords: women/Ukrainian women, emancipation, life’s possibilities and limitations, Galicia, World War I.

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